Note: I do not own TWD or TVD… just having fun.
Chapter Four
A shatter exploded behind her.
Maggie jumped and turned around, stepping around to the other side of the tower towards the courtyard next to the cell block. The sound pierced through the air and was the unmistakable tone of a glass breaking. She barely had time to process this fact before she felt a gust of wind against her skin and then a blow to the back of her head. The pain erupted into her vision and she hopelessly fumbled to hold onto the railing before consciousness escaped her completely…
The throbbing pounded through her head, pulsating and never ending. For a long time, her unconscious mind thought it would never end. It slammed against her and lingered a few moments before slamming her again, like a receding wave followed by another. With each wave, a little bit of awareness started to creep into her mind, as if washing away the shells of uncertainty away from the beach.
It felt like she was in constant motion, but at the same time she couldn't will herself to move at all. Her eyes fluttered under her heavy eye lids. Her head lolled to one side before she started to come around. Her body felt trapped, she knew she was moving, but couldn't actually move around.
Maggie opened her eyes, her head hanging and thus staring down into her own lap. It took a couple of blinks for her vision to blink while her brain took longer to form any coherent thoughts. It was then she realized why she wasn't able to move. A pair of handcuffs was clamped tightly around her wrists, the cool metal digging in uncomfortably. More alarmingly, it seemed half of her body was covered in duct tape. Her legs were pinned together by tape wrapped around her ankles and again at her knees. More tape was wrapped around her midsection, almost in a solid band as if a bunch of children had gotten carried away in a fit of glee.
But there was nothing to laugh about in this situation as it dawned on her that she was strapped into the passenger seat of a car.
The driver on her left had known the moment she woke, but didn't draw attention to himself and let her put the pieces of the puzzle together herself.
Maggie swallowed deeply and looked around her, the frantic glint in her eyes. She soon figured out she was sitting that blue Camaro that Damon had been driving earlier. The sensation of moving then made sense as she saw the trees passing by them quickly while the engine hummed down a desolate highway. Nothing looked familiar to her, it sounded crazy, but there was something about the Georgia forests they had spent months trudging around in that she would recognize anywhere.
I'm being kidnapped, the horror passed through her mind along with the million implications and things that could happen because of it. There are so many reasons for a young beautiful woman to be kidnap and she was no fool to think any of them were good.
Feeling the panic setting a fire to her, she started to jerk against the restraint on her body.
"Finally, you're awake!" Damon gasped followed by a smirk.
Maggie's head jerked in his direction, but her jaw kept clenched shut from anything, simply staring at him with wide green eyes.
Damon prepared himself for the typical hostage reaction. The freaking out, begging, pleading, and endless of questions. "Who are you? What do you want?" and his particular favorite, "Why me?" When none of that came though, he raised an eyebrow for a fleeting moment and carried on as if nothing happened.
"I ran out of music crossing the Tennessee border," Damon casually, his eyes flicking back towards the road.
Maggie froze in her seat, trying to will herself to unhear the words he just said. "We're in Tennessee?" She asked in a quiet, disbelieving tone.
Damon looked back at her, slightly impressed by how composed she was. Only slightly.
"Virginia, actually," He corrected quickly.
"But technically we were in North Carolina for a while too," He added, just to see her face pale a little bit more. While she wasn't the yelling and screaming type, her expression of unhindered shock was quite memorable.
Maggie sucked in a deep breath, trying not to let her emotions get the best of her and think through the situation. All the experience with the group and the particular situation with Randall definitely taught her she had to make her moves carefully.
"Where are we going?" She asked after several long minutes of silence, keeping her voice calm and less shaky.
Damon said nothing during her silence, his eyes flickering between her and the road. It intrigued him how composed she was, which he didn't doubt came from the terrors this new world had forced herself to harden against.
"Mystic Falls," He answered.
"Never heard of it," Maggie answered flatly with a frown.
Damon let out a chuckle that seemed jarring to Maggie with the tension in the small space. "You and the rest of the world… Which is probably why we were able to keep the town safe."
Maggie's eyebrows rose at the word safe. For so long, it seemed to be a fictional pipedream. Some idea that they had clung onto, hoping it came in the form of answer of a place they could settle down and start to build a life again. She didn't even use that word with the prison though, because no matter how hard they had tried, people were still dying and they were still sleeping with their eyes open.
Safe was just a word she couldn't trust herself to believe in any more. Her eyes narrowed at Damon, who seemed completely relaxed at the whole situation in contrast to the tension rippling through her body. At the very least, maybe she could get some information from him...
"How many people are there?" Maggie asked suspiciously.
Damon gave her an odd look. Of all the questions she had, she was asking that one? He knew from the moment he saw her that she would be different. It was almost unnerving how she wasn't reacting in any of the predictable manners he was expecting.
"I don't know, about half the town survived," He gave an annoyed shrug. "See for yourself, we're almost there."
Maggie frowned at his response. She had no idea how big this town was so it didn't really answer her question.
After a while, her worry got the best of her and she had to ask, "What did you to do my group?"
Damon let out a small sigh. Finally, a normal reaction! "Relax, they were sleeping in their cozy cells when we left," he neglected to mention the fact he had to knock out the redneck too in the process.
"And, I'm sure they put two and two together when they woke up," Damon smirked at her, also neglecting to mention the fact he had busted open the exercise field gate lock to get his car out and it was probably filled with walkers by now.
Maggie shuddered at his answer, not liking the tone of it at all and the feeling there was way more to it than that. She didn't say anything more though, part of her not wanting to push her luck with questions and the other part afraid to find out what actually happened to them.
Before he said anything further, his eyes caught something on the horizon and narrowed on it. "Damnit," He then muttered under his breath and his expression suddenly became seriously. The car slowed to a stop and Maggie looked around them in confusion. They stopped in the middle of a two land highway. There were a few abandoned cars, but otherwise there was no sign of civilization around them, forest crowded the highway with mountains in the distance. This obviously wasn't their destination.
Damon quickly rolled up the window on his side before he cut the engine and engaged the locks on the doors.
"What's going on?" Maggie asked.
"Herd heading this way," Damon nodded, anxiously rubbing a hand against his chin. "Maybe a hundred or so," He clarified.
Maggie's eyes widened and looked to the horizon. She could barely make out the shuffling mass, but there was no denying it. A large pack of walkers was heading straight in their direction and they only had a couple of minutes before it would be on top of them.
Feeling her blood run cold, she asked temporarily putting aside the hostage situation, "Shouldn't we find another way?"
Damon shook his head, "No, I don't feel like finding another route that may or may not be blocked."
Maggie gave him an 'Are you crazy?' look.
"They shouldn't be able to smell you in here," Damon explained, trying to appear more nonchalant than he actually was. "We have to stay still and quiet."
Maggie shook her head, thinking that was the worst logic she ever heard. "Smell me? What about you?" She hissed, already lowering her voice, even though there was no way the approaching herd could hear them yet.
Damon snorted, ignoring the venom in her voice, "Let's just say I'm not their type."
He didn't have the time to explain to her that not once in the past year had a walker ever tried to take a bite out of him. Not just him, but no walker ever expressed particular desire in munching on Stefan, Elena, Klaus, or even Barbie.
Maggie stared into the blue eyes of what had to be a delusional madman. This was not the type of environment to have a superiority complex and now this kidnapping nutjob was going to get her killed.
"Just stay still and quiet. We'll wait for them to pass through," Damon tried to reassure, doing letting to actually calm the brunette.
He then leaned a little closer and stared with an intensity she hadn't seen before, causing her to inhale sharply. "I promise I'll protect you," He whispered to her softly. He looked at her in such a way she wasn't sure if there was more meaning to those words. Feeling uncomfortable at the shift in tension, she tore her eyes away from and out the windshield, watching the walkers approaching less than ten yards away now.
Against her better judgment to flee from the herd, the two sat in silence as they grew closer. She tensed and waited for the snarling to beginning. The herd seemed agitated and moving with a determined pace, probably having heard the sound of the car before. She visibly jumped as the first few bumped against the front bumper.
She jumped a second time when she felt a hand on her forearm and seeing Damon giving her a warning look out of the corner of her eye. Letting out a very shaky breath, she gave the faintest nod and tried to focus on remaining still. Nervously, she watched the first couple of walkers start to shuffle by her side of the car. A decayed African American businessman stopped in his steps and seemed to sniff at air even though the cartilage of his nose was completely gone. Maggie clenched her fists to keep herself from shaking more than she already was.
The walker jerked his head back as if he caught a whip of something foul… fouler than a herd of walkers. Then the creature turned his head back and continued scuffling on.
The bumps against the car started to increase as more walkers came into contact with the blue car. The noises of grunts and moans penetrated through the windows and the sound of clothing or body parts rubbing against the frame of the car as they stumbled by.
Maggie continued to twitch and jerk, despite the hand that remained on her forearm. Her mind couldn't fully process how they were still alive. They should've been ripped apart by now and the car crushed.
"Close your eyes," Damon hissed so softly Maggie barely caught it.
She slammed her eyes shut and tried to push the image of walkers completely consuming the field of vision around the car out of her mind. It was then she became more aware of the hand on her forearm. She had to remind herself that the walkers couldn't touch her right now, trying to build up a sense of security within the car, even though she knew it was false.
Instead, she tried to focus on the one hand that was touching her. It remained exactly where he had first placed it, but now his thumb was rubbing back and forth in the universal gesture of reassurance. Nothing could reassure her that she would survive this right now, but it did give her something to distract her from the walking dead around them.
They remained in that silence for the better part of an hour before the last stragglers of the herd started to shuffle past their doors.
Damon let out a deep sigh, anxious the storm had passed them and itching to get out of there. He took his hand on Maggie's arm away to start up the engine. "It's okay now," He announced to her and slammed on the gas. Maggie's eyes shot open and she looked in the side mirror as the last of the walkers turned back around and hopeless tried following after the Camaro. The burning smell of rubber was the closest they would get as the car took off down the highway again.
They were silent for the rest of the trip was fine by Maggie. She needed the time to process what had just happened and how it was possible they just drove away as if they were simply stuck in holiday traffic. Oh, and there was also the fact this was probably the oddest kidnapping she had ever heard of.
Slowly the terrain changed as it was clear they were climbing into the mountains. A few hours had passed and she figured it was somewhere in the late afternoon by now, not quite sure if the clock on the dashboard was accurate or not. They had driven by several exits and changed highways a few times, but Damon never showed any signs of stopping.
At least not until they reached a particular stretch of the road that was straight for the most part before bending off into the woods again after a mile. Suddenly Damon brought the car to a stop, but left the engine running and not even putting it in park.
"Okay, now I need your help," Damon looked at Maggie.
"Excuse me?" She scrunched her brows in confusion.
Damon shifted uncomfortably, not particularly enjoying asking for help, but there was no way around it. He pointed out to the sides of the road where there were pegs in the ground with yellow cloth dangling from them. "You see those? That's the county line for Mystic Falls," He explained. Sure enough, Maggie spotted them as well as several more yellowing markings the tree trunks going into the forest on either side in a line. "There's a second line behind it," He added. About a hundred yards past the first boundary line was a second identical one.
Maggie nodded.
"Good, when we cross that first line, I'm going to need you to take the wheel until we cross the second one," Damon stated seriously.
Maggie choked out, "What? Why?" in surprise.
Damon ran a frustrated hand through his hair, trying to figure out how to explain this in a way she would believe him. "Because as soon as I cross that line, I'm going to be in a lot of pain… No matter what I do or say, I need you to make sure we get across that second line," He looked her directly in the eye, "If you don't do this, we're both dead." He didn't try to threaten her, but express the gravity of the situation.
Maggie remained silent a long time, staring at him with a blank expression. For a moment, he considered compulsion just to know what she was thinking, but he pushed that thought away. She couldn't pretend to understand what was going on with this man. Something in his expression told her that he was deadly serious about all this though. And if nothing else, maybe she would be able to use the situation to get away from him.
She held her hands up in front of her. "How am I supposed to do that?" She clinked her wrists together, itching to get rid of the handcuffs.
Damon reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small key. Holding it up between them, he smirked at her, "Don't do anything stupid, okay?"
"It's a little late for stupid. You already kidnapped me," Maggie snapped before her mind caught up with her words.
Damon's eyes widened with a flare of something she didn't recognize as he reached forward and took the handcuffs off. "If you crash my car, I'll be pissed," He smirked, pocketing the cuffs and turning his attention back to the road.
"Ready?" He asked, taking a deep breath and frowning at the county line.
Maggie rubbed her wrists, which were sore and stiff, before giving a slow nod.
Author's Note: Yay for a little roadtrip bonding… kinda. And not quite Mystic Falls, I know! But next chapter the real fun begins.
PLEASE REVIEW! Let me know what people think… even if it's just to tell me I'm completely crazy.